Breakthrough Start for Athletics' Luzardo, Who Throws 6.1 Scoreless vs. D-Backs

Rookie left-hander Jesús Luzardo gets rave reviews from teammates after turning in the best start of his admittedly young career Wednesday, throwing shutout baseball for 6.1 innings against Arizona in a 4-1 Oakland Athletics win.

Wednesday night was the coming out party for Jesús Luzardo.

Yes, he pitched a bit in the final month of last season. And yes, he’d made three big league starts before Wednesday.

When the A’s closed their eyes and dreamed about someone with Luzardo’s potential could do, this was game very well might have been what had come to mind. He went out against a good team that was hot, the winners of five straight, including two in Phoenix against the A’s. And he simply dominated.

He allowed four singles, two walks and hit a batter in 6.1 innings of a 4-1 Oakland win over Arizona. There was one moment when he seemed to be in trouble, the sixth inning, when a leadoff walk and subsequent single had the Diamondbacks’ dugout believing they might yet get to him.

But Gold Glovers Matt Chapman at third base and Matt Olson at first base combined for a highlight-reel double play. Then center fielder Ramón Laureano made a blurry quick retreat to haul in rocket, and Laureano was unscathed.

“It was huge,” Luzardo said Chapman making a clean pickup, then stepping on the bag for the force before letting fly on one hop toward Olson. “it saved me a lot of pitches. I think I let him know like 100 times that he’s the man.”

Luzardo left the game after a one-out single in the seventh, turning the ball over to Yusmeiro Petit, who allowed a hit but nothing else.

This start came after Luzardo had allowed a career-worse six runs and nine hits his last time out against San Francisco. Manager Bob Melvin said Luzardo couldn’t wait to get out to redeem himself, to which Luzardo concurred.

“I just wanted to get the ball again,” he said. “The next day (would have been good). But I just had to kind of sit back. I felt I had a plan and I worked well with it.”

He also had a changeup, a pitch he found elusive in his start against the Giants, and a breaking pitch that he “threw it back into the mix.”

Luzardo, acquired in 2017 from Washington in the trade that sent Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson to the Nationals, came into the season listed as the top player in the A’s minor league system, although there was no way he was going to be in the minor leagues. The 22-year old left-hander wouldn’t have been in the minor leagues last year were it not for injury.

He’s got believers in the men who play behind him. Robbie Grossman, whose two-run double in the first inning got the A’s off on the right foot, called him “a great young pitcher.”

“He’s got a heck of a career ahead of him,” Grossman said. “Just to be on the same field as him and watch him pitch and learn now to pitch at this level is fun to watch. I’m happy he’s on my team.”

Mark Canha, whose two-run homer in the third inning completed the scoring for the A’s, called Wednesday’s effort by Luzardo “a really good bounce-back game.”

“You could say that was awesome,” Canha said of Luzardo. “You love to see that from a young pitcher. Watching him work tonight, he just looked cool as a cucumber. That’s a sign of maturity, I think and there are good things to come for that guy.”

Luzardo pitched in relief last year, and also in his first couple of games this year, that because he’d had to quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19. His first two starts, against the Rangers and the Astros, were good, 10 innings and two runs total, but he was knocked sideways by the Giants his last time out.

“I was surprised that he gave it up in the fashion he did,” Melvin said of the game against the Giants. “He pitched today like every other time we’ve seen him. He’s got such a good changeup, and it looks just like his fastball, and he can throw it in any count. And he had a much sharper breaking ball today.

“Tonight, everything was working for him.”

One thing Luzardo had going for him was an Oakland offense that didn’t wait until the midnight hour to get its game together. After the A’s had gone without a hit with runners in scoring position in the two games at Chase Field Monday and Tuesday, Grossman doubled to right with the bases loaded in the first, scoring a pair.

“He’s been largely our most productive player,” Canha said of Grossman. “Right now, he’s absolutely killing it.”

Two innings later, Canha, who’d been hit by a pitch for the fifth time this season in the first inning just before Grossman’s double, homered to left for a 4-0 lead that would be all Luzardo would get … or need.

The Diamondbacks finally got a run in the eighth inning on a single off Joakim Soria by Tim Locastro, who stole second, took third on a fly ball to center and scored on another of the same. Liam Hendriks threw a 1-2-3 ninth for his eighth save as the A’s improved to 17-8, good for first in the American League West, 2½ games up on the Astros.

Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3

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